Week Five: Philippians 2:12–18
Prepared by Dr Graham Leo for the free use and distribution by anyone, anywhere, for the purpose of serving the people of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Week Five
Philippians 2:12–18
12 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. 14 Do all things without complaining and arguing, 15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without defect in the middle of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as lights in the world, 16 holding up the word of life; that I may have something to boast in the day of Christ, that I didn’t run in vain nor labour in vain. 17 Yes, and if I am poured out on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice, and rejoice with you all. 18 In the same way, you also rejoice, and rejoice with me.
Commentary
This passage contains one very difficult idea but then proceeds to set out some simple steps that we can do to carry it out.
The difficult idea is in this phrase: work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (v12).
On the face of it, this doesn’t sound like a very encouraging invitation to Christianity. Most of us will respond with the objection that we have been taught that salvation is given to us a free gift by God; why should we have to work it out? This sounds like a time payment scheme, a payday loan scam. It’s offered as a gift, but then you spend the rest of your life paying it off!?!
Furthermore, we are to do this with fear and trembling! just imagine running an Alpha course, inviting people to become Christians if this is the best we can offer:
Come to our church and learn about Christianity! Come and learn over ten terrifying weeks how you can fill your life with fear and trembling for the rest of your days on this planet!
I can’t imagine this being the most successful advertising promo in the history of your church! But yet here it is in print. In the Holy Bible. What are we to do with it! (We wonder wryly whether we can start to understand why someone tore that page out of their copy of Philippians that we looked at the other week and tossed it in the desert sands near Cairo a couple of millennia ago!!!)
It’s time to apply Leo’s First Rule of Bible Interpretation: When the text seems to put God in a bad light, think some more and dig a bit deeper, because God is always good and always acts rightly, and you’ve probably got it wrong.
As we dig a bit deeper, we discover this: The ‘working out’ word means to accomplish, to complete, to do those things that will make you fit for being awarded the certificate at the end of the course, the honour at the end of the race. The word was commonly used by the heroic Greek epic poets such as Homer, in the context of winning battles and honours.
What Paul is on about here, is the idea of staying the course, not giving up because life gets too hard, or there seem to be more exciting things on offer, or because we just get too busy.
As we reflect more deeply on the fear and trembling part we might remember the way that the Israelites felt when they saw the effects of God close up in action at Mt Sinai, when Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments. They were terrified and told Moses he could go up there on his own, while they stayed down on the plain. Here’s how Exodus tells it:
All the people perceived the thunderings, the lightnings, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking. When the people saw it, they trembled, and stayed at a distance. 19 They said to Moses, “Speak with us yourself, and we will listen; but don’t let God speak with us, lest we die.”
20 Moses said to the people, “Don’t be afraid, for God has come to test you, and that his fear may be before you, that you won’t sin.” 21 The people stayed at a distance, and Moses came near to the thick darkness where God was. (Ex. 20:18–20)
The thick darkness where God was! This phrase sounds so at odds with everything we have ever thought about God. This passage is really upending our settled ideas about God and Christianity!
But how good is it to realise that when you are in the thickest darkness you could ever imagine, you will find God even there! Remember how Dante opens his Inferno:
In the middle of the journey of my life
I found myself in a dark forest,
having lost sight of the straight way.
For lots of good reasons, we’ve tried to make contemporary church friendly and accessible. For many centuries from about 800 to 1700AD, church could be a forbidding sort of place. People got burned at the stake for believing the wrong thing. The church and the State had got together and formed a power bloc that only the very brave or the very foolish would dare challenge.
In the modern era, we’ve rightly tried to redress that imbalance. As with all pendulum-swinging exercises, we may sometimes have swung it a little too far in the happy-face emoji direction. God is still the same God as he was in Moses’ day, and we do well to remember his awesome holiness – his capacity to induce fear and trembling in those who encounter his holiness. But that’s a story for another day.
Nevertheless, here Paul tells us straight after the fear and trembling part, that God is at work inside our spirits, working out his good pleasure. That doesn’t sound too terrifying.
So perhaps we might pull all this together and read this passage generally as meaning that I have a responsibility as a Christian to make sure that I behave in ways that befit my calling as a Christian person, and whilst I had better remember that God is holy, and do as well as I can if I want to receive the reward of his salvation, God has promised to be with me. In fact, he guarantees a good and pleasant outcome at the end of the journey of my life, if I stay true to the course, even if there might be some occasional difficulties I have to undergo in the meantime.
And the next part gives us some simple practical advice on how to go about it. Verse 14 and following puts it simply and clearly. Shut up and stop whingeing. Stop being argumentative and picking fights with everyone around you. Stop taking offence where none is intended. Get off your high horse and remember you're supposed to be the bright one here, shining a light into the darkness of the world around.
Verse 17 tells us how to react when someone does the wrong thing by us – not that that would ever happen in a church community!!! Just get over it, says Paul and choose to rejoice because God has allowed this to happen because he regarded you as being mature enough to handle it. Makes sure you don’t let him down.
It’s so easy to get our knickers in a twist over what other people ought to have done. Or not done. Whatever goes wrong, just don’t complain about it, is Paul’s instruction. After all, we're supposed to be the lights in this world of general darkness. So let’s not join the aorta chorus – you know the one – aorta do sumpin’ about that; the trouble with this church is that it’s too hippo-critical; aorta sing different songs ‘n’ have more fun stuff.
No, says Paul, that’s not the way to behave as Christians. We have to be the ones who stay positive. Don’t complain. Just stay cheerful and get on with it. If you can't find something good to say, then don’t say anything at all. Your mother was right, wasn’t she, when she told you that?
Group or Individual Questions for Reflection
1. How do you match up the two sort-of-opposite notions of facing God with fear and trembling as well as with joyful hope?
2. Can you put into your own words what you think Paul is getting at when he says we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling?
3. Why does Paul say we ought to rejoice?
4. Can you find something to rejoice about in your life right now?
5. Think about the last time you found yourself complaining about something. Was it really worth it? Was there another way you could have dealt with it?
6. How could you develop a culture in your home and family that rejected complaining and arguing as the default position when things go wrong?
Passage for Memory:
Do everything without complaining and arguing. 2:14.
Prayer Time:
1. Ask for forgiveness for the number of times you have been caught out complaining or arguing.
2. Ask for the capacity to see something worth rejoicing over when you are faced with difficulties.
3. Pray for those people who have been annoying you most over the last weeks or months.